Chapter 62: Serena's Whereabouts
Dashing through the forest canopy, I eventually find one of the hundreds of clearings that can be found throughout the Kalos woods.
It really is concerning how many of these I come across.
To some slight mix of disappointment and satisfaction on Courtney's part, I've taken up being creepy as I track down Serena and friends using her GPS location. I've left the Lucario egg in my mom's care, or Courtney if she isn't busy doing…whatever she does when I'm not around; probably looking through my things.
Coming to the main path, I follow it north with speeds that make all of the smaller, weaker pokémon scurry away in fear. It appears that Serena's currently in one of the many quaint, but ultimately unremarkable, villages and towns scattered across Kalos.
…Maybe that's where all the clearings come from?
I duck under the archway and land on the ground with my two fleshy legs now supporting me. I may be something of a morally gray scientist, but that doesn't mean I want to needlessly scare local populaces wherever I go.
Now, the GPS wasn't that exact, so I know Serena's in this town…but that's about it. Luckily, knowing her hobbies, she's either at a grocery store for supplies, or she's resting at the available rooms at the Pokémon Center. Really, it's a coinflip.
I'll start with the Pokémon Center first since this town has both indoor and outdoor markets, and it'll be a major pain to search through all of the stores.
"Hello. How may I help you?" Nurse Joy asks as I approach. You know… With all of those identical grunts beneath Lumiose, I've began wondering on how many people actually look identical. I've heard cults will make people look identical to remove all sense of self, but that doesn't make sense for Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy. Another thought could be a regional variant pokémon since pokémon in a region will generally look identical to another.
I'm…pretty sure they're human… But that Meowth can also talk…
I shake my head of these errant thoughts and engage with the probably-human being in front of me. "Yes, hi. I'm looking for the room number of a friend. Her name is Serena."
She types on her computer, and, being bored, I try my hand at wireless hacking using the computer setup in my spine. With…minimal effort, I get her CPU to send me the GPU contents to me wirelessly. I still prefer wired connections, but I guess I could invest some more effort into my wireless setup.
Finding a file from two days ago, Nurse Joy turns to me. "I'm sorry, but there's nobody currently here with that name."
Quickly downloading the file, I reply, "No problem. Thanks for your help."
"Have a nice day!"
I give her a small wave as I walk away and parse the file. It appears that Serena, Ash, and Clemont bought rooms two days ago, stayed a night and checked out. However, Serena's GPS says that she's still in this town. However, looking at the GPS history, it's saying that she's been here for two days.
Now…hypothesizes. Serena and friends got kidnapped. It's likely given the malicious nature of Team Rocket, and their accompanying idiocy in leaving stuff in and on a person that they kidnap. However, it is unfortunately equally as likely that Serena simply dropped her phone somewhere.
With a groan, I trudge out the doors and into the bright sun as I begin my journey to hit seventeen possible last known locations to find any hints of Serena's location because that's my duty as someone who has a major crush on her and has the abilities of a creepy stalker!
…Maybe I should rethink my life decisions…
———————————————————————————————————————
"No, thank you. I'm just browsing," I say for the…thirteenth time today as I idly hack into whatever security camera footage is available. Sometimes I get unlucky with closed circuit stuff. Other times, like right now, I get stuff that can be accessed through the internet.
"Okay, miss. Just let me know if you need any help," the worker replies in his best customer service voice. Hmm, since I'm already violating several laws, I wonder if I could read input from my eyes and reverse lookup a person and figure out a ton of information on someone.
Fun project for later.
I saunter down the aisle of many bread brands as I skim the contents of the security footage. Let's see… Not much really. People coming and going, kids playing in the store, teenagers playing catch with the fruit…
Ah! Serena! She's buying baking ingredients… Quite a few, actually. Is she planning on making several batches? Perhaps they've caught quite the multitude of pokémon, and, if so, I can relate.
Dashing to the last aisle she was in, I look around. I don't know if there's anything here that will help me, but—
Oh. That's concerning.
Gingerly, I kneel down and pick up the abandoned phone off the ground. The soft pink case giving me clear identification as to whom it belongs.
Serena's phone is here, so where is she?
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
RunningOnJava
RunningOnJava Slightly shorter chapter today.
I've been working on an Anisotropic Kuwahara Filter, and I've been struggling with making the eigenvectors. I used the Sobel operators and created the structure tensor to get the eigenvalues, but I'm unsure of how to construct an eigenvalue map that's the same dimension as the input image. A part of me is saying to screw it and loop over the image and create each vector on a per-pixel basis, but other parts of me argue against that flawed logic.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone